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Obama’s Bureaucrats Not Allowed To Dictate Who Are The Clergy

As much as anything, the upcoming election is all about Obama’s minions leaping into and stomping on (with jackboots) the everyday activities of all Americans. Obama’s recently illegal appointments to the CFPB and the NLRB are an example of that. It is unfortunate that there is very little Republicans in Congress can do about it, unless they get stupid and try to impeach Obama, an impeachment that will never garner a trial, let alone a conviction in the Senate, and allow Obama to play David against the Republican Goliath and guarantee his re-election (the degenerate Bill Clinton used this to his advantage; however and as an aside, if Obama does win in November and Republicans do retain at least the House, they should begin impeachment proceedings against Obama immediately for at least Operation Fast & Furious). Republicans can and should use Obama’s power grab to graphically display Obama’s lawlessness, but it will be the courts who will shut down any attempts at enforcement by either the CFPB and the NLRB.

This is what happened yesterday. Obama’s EEOC has been attempting to tell the various religions that the administration has the power to determine the qualifications of any faith’s clergy. In a stunning unanimous decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC (Hosanna-Tabor was a Lutheran school), the Supreme Court put the brakes on that notion. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion that was joined by all of the other Justices, Justice Thomas wrote a separate (and succinct) concurring opinion, and Justice Alito wrote a separate concurring opinion, which was joined (shock! amazement!) by Obama’s own Justice Kagan. It was not only an epic smackdown of Obama’s EEOC shysters, but it also stomped on the 6th Circuit that had wrongly overturned the District Court decision that favored the school (the 6th Circuit panel decision went 3-0, with a Clinton appointee writing that opinion and an Obama appointee writing a concurring opinion).

There is no doubt God-King Barack wants the government to meddle in every little thing we do. It doesn’t matter if the Constitution has said this isn’t allowed; he’s going to do it anyway. The other day, Obama addressed his bureaucrats in a “pep talk”:

“I want to say thank you to each and every one of you, because the EPA touches on the lives of every single American every single day.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the EPA to touch me any day. And I sure as hell don’t want the Obama administration to have the power to dictate who is valid as a member of the clergy in any of the various religions (yes, even Islam).

President Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claimed during oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court last week that it can order a church to restore a fired minister to a teaching position.

But that was a claim not even the president’s handpicked appointee, the very liberal Justice Elena Kagan, could accept as she and her colleagues considered Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. [...] The justices then rejected the argument of Leondra Kruger, Obama’s lawyer for the EEOC, who argued that there’s no ministerial exception in the Constitution, only the same rights that secular organizations possess to choose their own affiliations.

At this, Scalia exploded. “That’s extraordinary! There, black on white in the text of the Constitution, are special protections for religion. And you say it makes no difference?”

Kagan agreed with Scalia’s rejection of the argument that the First Amendment doesn’t protect churches from government ordering who they should hire as pastor or priest.

Even Kagan gets it, as apparently do Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor.

In an amusing turn, the hypocritical Americans United for Separation of Church and State had not only filed an amicus brief supporting the EEOC, they issued a press release yesterday denouncing the Court’s decision. In a nutshell, a major advocate that claims to educate “Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom” wants the government to meddle in religious affairs. Utterly shameful hypocrites.

As with Obama’s illegal appointments, Republican candidates and members of Congress should proclaim loud and long how the administration is eschewing the separation of powers and the Constitution itself. Other than die-hard Democrats who would vote for Obama regardless of what he does, a great majority of the American people are not stupid and will recognize Obama’s attempt at tyranny.